The Woods Are Always Watching

Neena and Josie are two best friends who bonded over being outsiders in high school and are now are facing a future without each other, as Neena travels to the West Coast for school, seperating them by 2000 miles. Desperate for a last-minute bonding trip together, Neena and Josie decide to take a three day hike and camping through the Pisgah National Forest. What starts off as an innocent and rather inexperiencedly planned trip, suddenly turns into something far more terrifying than wither one of the girls could have possibly planned for and soon the girls are fighting for their very survival. Both Neena and Josie are the kind of quirky, eccentric teenage protagonists outcasts that make them likeable and relateable. You can feel the tensions in their friendship as they fight to save it whilst camping in the woods. AS a reader, you feel for them and you want them to pull through to the end. Which is done throught some excellent character development on Stephanie Perkins' end. The novel is well written and easy to follow, told through alternating viewpoints and in seperate chunks--while the characters are "together" and "apart". Which makes for an interesting read and timeline that will keep you on pins and needles from start to finish. The story is gripping, intense, chilling, and fascinating--though not for the faint of heart.

I usually don’t read horror or thrillers but this book seemed perfect for spooky season but it wasn't exactly spooky as it was tense and shocking at times. Front the start, even when the content of the pages was mostly an introduction of best friends Neena and Josie, there was a lot of tension (which I think is a credit to the writing chops of the author). From there, the story unfolds into a deep-dive into the friendship, each girls' history, and their motivations and flasw as they delve deeper into the forest. Their lack of outdoor skills and in backpacking in particular drives up the tension as both friends vacillate between nostalgia and feelings of resentment about the future of their friendship. The author spends a significant amount of the story on the development and testing of this friendship. Their packs are heavy, they're hungry and thirsty and exhausted, and things don't go their way. So there's a lot of complaining and bickering, which can be off-putting, but the physical and emotional strain is such a good mirror to what the girls are experiencing in their lives and friendship outside of that forest, so I appreciated this! But when the twist/horror element entered the story, I was thrown into a much faster-paced thriller than the first half of the book and while the character development and motivation helped me to feel invested in the girls, there wasn't enough depth in the villain for me to fully believe the second half or feel satisfied with the ending.

First off, the cover is nicely creepy and had me really excited to get a chance to read this book. It is a fairly quick read and could have been great but did not live up to the promise of the cover, at least for the first half. That would be my recommendation, skip the first half the book and get the the good scary stuff. The first half consists of two dare I say stupid girls who are supposed to be best friends since forever going on a goodbye camping trip before the separate to head off to different colleges. They spend that time discovering that because they did not listen to Josie's brother, Win, they brought the wrong things and just keep sniping and blaming each other for the predicaments they get in. I almost quit reading then because Neena and Josie really irritated me. It was a short book though so I kept on. The second half is filled with scariness and danger and much creepiness that helped redeem it a bit but the ending is a bit implausible too. I definitely do not want to go camping after reading this book! It could have been a really great book but not for me.